Richard Allen Honn, a Los Angeles business attorney and
USC lecturer, was named a State Bar Court hearing judge yesterday by the State Supreme Court,
which also reappointed Madge Watai as Review Department judge.

Honn fills the post left
vacant when Stanford Reichert was appointed a Los Angeles Superior Court
commissioner. He said he expects to take office in January and will serve a
term expiring Nov. 1, 2004.

He will be one of three
judges hearing attorney discipline cases in Los Angeles, joining Robert Talcott, an appointee of Gov.
Gray Davis, and a new judge to be appointed by Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, D-CulverCity. Wesson’s appointee will
succeed Judge Paul Bacigalupo, who was recently elected to the Los Angeles
Superior Court for a term beginning in January.

Honn told the MetNews he
was “thrilled” to be joining the State Bar Court and “humbled” to have survived the
selection process, in which he was one of 11 finalists interviewed by the
evaluating committee chaired by First District Court of Appeal Justice Paul
Haerle. There were reportedly more than 100 applicants, including some Los
Angeles Superior Court judges.

Honn is currently a partner
in a downtown firm, which recently reorganized as Honn Kasai LLP.

The timing of his
departure is odd, he quipped, since he “just spent a lot of money on
stationary.” But his clients have been supportive, and he is leaving the firm
in the “good hands” of Wayne Kasai, whom he has practiced with for the last
eight years, he said.

Honn has been in
private practice since graduating from LoyolaLawSchool in 1978, and a lecturer in clinical finance and
business economics at USC’s Marshall School of Business since 1981. He also
holds a master’s degree in public administration from UCLA, and has been a
volunteer mediator and judge pro tem, and a hearing officer for various
hospitals in cases involving physician peer review.

Watai, who did not
return a MetNews phone call, has served on the court since 1996, when the
Supreme Court appointed her as a hearing judge. She was elevated to the Review
Department two years ago.

The 74-year-old jurist
practiced in Los
Angeles
from 1968 to 1978 with her husband, Gardena attorney George Watai. She left the firm when
then-Gov. Jerry Brown appointed her to the Los Angeles Municipal Court.

She was elevated by
Brown to the Superior Court in 1981 and served there until being named to the State Bar Court. Her new term runs to
Nov. 1, 2008.